In this month’s selection from Platts Energy Economist, Managing Editor Ross McCracken explains what is currently contributing to Russia’s slipping grip on the European natural gas markets and questions whether Russian gas will be competitive in the future.

Mexico’s debut bidding event in Round One of its energy reform is now history, and resulted in what was widely agreed was a poor showing.

Now, the post-mortems have begun, both within industry and the Mexican government, which openly acknowledged it needs to do a better job of listening to industry’s concerns about contract terms that might have attracted more winners had the sticking points been addressed to begin with.

There’s something about steel. Before I joined Steel Business Briefing in 2008, I’d never really known what I wanted to do career-wise. I worked for some good companies, including competitors of Platts (which acquired SBB in 2011), but never really envisaged staying in the price reporting sector. Nothing against it, I was just young and finding my way, armed with humanities degrees that didn’t gear me up for much outside of education.

Russian giant Rosneft’s recent deals in Asia suggest it is potentially shifting the balance of its crude oil sales in the region — one of its most important export markets — from a spot tender basis to long term contracts and significantly reducing the amount of Russian crude that enters the spot market in Asia.

Secretary of State John Kerry held a question-and-answer session to a packed house Friday in New York at the Council on Foreign Relations to talk about the recently-concluded nuclear deal between Iran and several Western nations, including the US. It didn’t matter that the breakfast was called on about 24 hours notice on a Friday in the summer; it was a true VIP audience. (For example, among those in attendance: Hess Oil CEO John Hess.)

John Kingston, president of the McGraw Hill Financial Institute and a long-time Platts editorial leader, was in attendance. And as he noted, there was one word that, amazingly, didn’t emanate from Secretary Kerry’s mouth, not even once. You can find out what that word was on the Institute’s blog here.

Negotiating a union labor contract is often a slog. It gets more complicated if it’s a multi-year deal, and a bit treacherous if it’s a highly cyclical business.

All three apply to the steel industry, where major producers are in contract negotiations with the United Steelworkers union for long-term deals to replace current ones, which expire September 1. Throw in weak steel demand and high import penetration and it gets even stickier.

How does one prompt more oil production in a time of lean budgets and low prices? In this week’s Oilgram News column, New Frontiers, Starr Spencer explains how some are trying to find success by revisiting horizontal wells.

About 700 million barrels of crude oil stored in four sites along the US Gulf coast seems to have recently inspired the imagination of a cash-strapped Congress.

With US crude production nearing record highs and prices falling below $50/b, federal lawmakers are pushing to sell millions of barrels from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve to fund bills with little, or nothing, to do with energy.

China’s imports of refined nickel increased by a staggering 250% in June to 38,545 mt compared to 11,014 mt in June 2014. Quarter on quarter, China’s refined nickel imports increased by 236% in Q2 to 79,911 mt from 23,813 mt in Q1 2015. If this upward trend continues, China could import over 207,000 mt of refined nickel this year — a potential increase of 60% on last year’s total of 129,980 mt.